Monday, June 1, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Exodus 1-2
Key Verse
Exodus 2:2 — “And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.”
Devotional Thought
Some days begin with the sound of bricks being made and the smell of river mud. Exodus opens not with thunder and plagues but with a slow, grinding oppression: a new Pharaoh who “knew not Joseph,” taskmasters set over Israel, lives made bitter “with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick.” June has arrived, and many of us know something of that weariness—work that seems to go nowhere, duties that multiply faster than strength, the quiet fear that no one sees. Yet the text insists on a strange arithmetic: “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” God’s purposes are not stopped by cruelty; sometimes they are hidden inside it.
Notice who God honors in this chapter. Not the mighty, but two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, whose names are preserved forever because they “feared God” more than they feared a king. They told Pharaoh a clever half-truth and let the boys live, and God “made them houses”—families, a legacy, a future. Then a mother hides her goodly child three months, weaves an ark of bulrushes, and lays him in the flags by the river’s brink while his sister stands afar off to see what would become of him. The very river meant to drown Hebrew sons carries one of them straight into Pharaoh’s own household. God’s deliverance often looks like this: small, secret acts of courage that a watching world overlooks.
Moses grows up between two worlds, and his first attempt at deliverance is a failure—an Egyptian buried in the sand, a Hebrew asking, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?” He flees to Midian, sits down by a well, defends seven daughters from rough shepherds, and names his son Gershom: “I have been a stranger in a strange land.” Even the future deliverer must learn to be a stranger, a shepherd, a guest at another man’s table. God is not in a hurry. He is forming a man in obscurity before He uses him in the open.
The chapter ends not with Moses but with a nation groaning. “Their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant.” That is the hinge of the whole book. Before the burning bush, before the plagues, before the sea splits, God hears. Perhaps today you are not called to confront a Pharaoh; perhaps you are called to fear God in a small room, to hide a child, to stand by a well, or simply to groan honestly before the One who remembers His covenant. He is not deaf. He has respect unto His people.
Reflection
- Where in your life has opposition or hardship been met by God’s quiet increase, and how might that change the way you interpret a difficult season today?
- Like Shiphrah and Puah, are there places where you are tempted to obey an earthly authority rather than God—and what would it cost you to fear God first?
Prayer
Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we come to You as a people who sometimes groan under burdens too heavy to name. You heard Israel in Egypt, and You remembered Your covenant; hear us now. Give us the holy courage of Shiphrah and Puah, the quiet faith of Moses’ mother, and the patience of Moses in Midian. When we are afflicted, multiply Your work in us. When we are strangers in a strange land, be our home. Let our cries come up to You, and let Your mercy come down to us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.